Hokkien POJ–Tâi-lô Converter
Convert romanized Hokkien (Taiwanese / Minnan) between Pe̍h-ōe-jī (POJ) and Tâi-lô, with tone marks or tone numbers.
Hokkien POJ–Tâi-lô Converter
Converting…
Rules only — this page uses no dictionary, and everything runs in your browser. Nothing you type is sent anywhere.
How to use the POJ–Tâi-lô converter
Tâi-lô to POJ, or POJ to Tâi-lô. The two systems share most letters, so the page needs to know which one you typed.
With tone marks (Tâi-uân) or tone numbers (Tai5-uan5). Syllables can be joined by hyphens or spaces; the light-tone mark -- is kept.
Each syllable is respelled and its tone mark moved to the letter the other system puts it on. Tick "tone numbers" to get Tai5-oan5 instead of diacritics.
A word that is not one of the ministry's initials plus a final is left as it is and listed. Syllables with a dialect final the ministry's table gives no POJ spelling for are kept whole in Tâi-lô and flagged, and so is a tone number that cannot belong to its syllable.
Two ways to spell Hokkien, and where they part
Hokkien has two main romanizations. Pe̍h-ōe-jī — POJ, "vernacular writing" — is the older one; the ministry's own manual heads its POJ column 教會羅馬字, "church romanization", and older dictionaries such as Embree's of 1973 are written in it. Tâi-lô is the Taiwan Ministry of Education's scheme, announced in October 2006. The ministry says it hopes schools and textbooks will use Tâi-lô, and that it respects other systems in private publishing and research. Tâi-lô was built on POJ and the differences between them are regular — but they are not rare, which is why a reader moving between an older book and a modern course needs them spelled out.
What changes between the two
The ministry's manual lays the systems side by side, sound by sound. The consonant written ch in POJ is ts in Tâi-lô, and chh is tsh: POJ chia̍h, Tâi-lô tsia̍h. The vowel POJ writes as o with a dot, o͘, is oo in Tâi-lô. POJ's oa and oe are ua and ue: Tâi-oân becomes Tâi-uân. POJ eng and ek are ing and ik. And POJ's small raised ⁿ for a nasal vowel is written nn. Before a final h, POJ writers have used two orders: the ministry's comparison table writes ahⁿ, while Embree's dictionary writes the ⁿ first, as in saⁿh. Tâi-lô writes annh either way. This page reads both POJ orders and writes the ministry's.
Where the tone mark goes
Tâi-lô kept POJ's tone marks — acute for the second tone, grave for the third, a circumflex for the fifth, a macron for the seventh, a short vertical line for the eighth — and its manual fixes the letter that carries them: a first, then oo, then e or o, then i or u. POJ writers follow a different set of rules, so in some syllables the letters agree and only the mark moves: 位 is uī in Tâi-lô but ūi in POJ. In others both change: 我 is guá in Tâi-lô and góa in POJ. POJ marks the u when a syllable has both i and u, the other vowel when one of two vowels is i or u (ka̍uh), the second vowel of a longer final (goán, khiáu), and otherwise the o when o meets a or e. Writers have not fully agreed on the oa and oe cases, so this page follows the rules most use and says so.
What the page will not guess
The page converts spelling, not sound. A syllable is changed only when it is one of the ministry's 18 initials plus one of its finals; anything else is left as written and listed, so an English word or a typing slip is never "converted". The manual also lists two dozen dialect finals — ir, er, ee, eng and others — with no POJ spelling in its table. The page keeps any syllable with one of them whole in Tâi-lô and flags it, rather than respelling only its first consonant: Tâi-lô tseng turned into "cheng" would read as POJ for a different syllable, Tâi-lô tsing. The one exception is uih, which Embree's POJ dictionary spells the same way, so it converts. A tone number that cannot belong to its syllable — tok1, tong4 — is flagged too.
Penang and Singapore spellings
Penang's Hokkien association publishes a system it describes as taken from the Taiwan ministry's official romanization and "appropriately modified to record local pronunciation of Penang Hokkien". Read it as Tâi-lô here; a spelling modified for a Penang sound that falls outside the ministry's tables is left as written and listed. We found no body that sets a standard spelling for Singapore Hokkien, so the page does not model one.
Why 位 is uī in one system and ūi in the other, and two ways to place a nasal before h
Taiwan's Ministry of Education announced the Tâi-lô scheme on 14 October 2006 and published its manual in March 2007.
The manual compares 75 finals across Tâi-lô, POJ and other systems, sound by sound.
Tâi-lô writes POJ's ch and chh as ts and tsh: chia̍h becomes tsia̍h.
POJ's o͘ — an o with a dot — is oo in Tâi-lô; the manual keeps o· as a traditional alternative.
The ministry's table writes POJ's nasal mark after a final h, ahⁿ; Embree's 1973 POJ dictionary writes it before, saⁿh. Tâi-lô writes annh.
Tâi-lô adopted POJ's tone marks rather than inventing new ones, and allows tone numbers when marks are inconvenient.
In Tâi-lô the tone mark goes on a first, then oo, then e or o, then i or u.
位 is uī in Tâi-lô and ūi in POJ — the same letters, with the mark on a different one.
The manual uses a double hyphen for the light tone, as in its example āu--ji̍t.
The manual's example sentence is "I ài tsia̍h hî, bô ài tsia̍h bah" — he likes fish, not meat.
Frequently asked questions
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Two ways of writing Hokkien (Taiwanese, Minnan) in Latin letters. POJ, Pe̍h-ōe-jī, is the older system; Tâi-lô is the Taiwan Ministry of Education's 2006 scheme, built on POJ.
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A handful of regular spellings — ch/chh to ts/tsh, o͘ to oo, oa/oe to ua/ue, eng/ek to ing/ik, ⁿ to nn — and the letter that carries the tone mark in some syllables. They are regular, not rare: many words contain at least one.
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Yes. Tai5-uan5 and Tâi-uân are both understood, and the "tone numbers" option writes the result as numbers instead of marks.
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The two systems put it on different letters in some syllables. Tâi-lô ranks a, oo, e/o, then i/u; POJ marks the u when i and u meet, the second vowel of a longer final, and otherwise the o. So 我 is guá in Tâi-lô and góa in POJ.
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It does not parse as one of the ministry's initials plus one of its finals — an English word, a name in another spelling, a dialect or local spelling outside those tables, or a typing slip. The page leaves it as written and lists it rather than guessing.
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The manual lists 24 dialect finals — such as ir, er, ee and eng — without a POJ equivalent. The page keeps the whole syllable in Tâi-lô, first consonant included, and tells you. The exception is uih, which Embree's POJ dictionary spells the same way.
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Yes. The manual accepts o· for oo and a raised ⁿ for nn as traditional forms, and the page reads both.
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Yes. In POJ input, oo is read as o͘ and nn as ⁿ (hoo7, sannh), the convention of the digitised Embree dictionary, and with "tone numbers" ticked the POJ result is written that way too.
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No. It converts between two romanizations. Characters in your text are left exactly where they are.
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Partly. Penang's Hokkien association uses a Tâi-lô-based system modified for local sounds; spellings outside the ministry's tables are left as written and listed. We found no standard spelling for Singapore Hokkien. The page changes spelling only — it does not change pronunciation from one variety to another.
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No. The conversion is done by rules in your browser; nothing is downloaded or sent.
Method & sources
How it computes
Spellings follow the Taiwan Ministry of Education's 2007 Tâi-lô manual: its 18 initials, its 75-final comparison with POJ, its tone marks and Tâi-lô mark placement (a > oo > e, o > i, u). POJ marks follow the six placement rules most writers use. A token that is not one of the manual's initials plus a final is left as written.
What this tool implements
- Every spelling correspondence is the Ministry of Education manual's own: its initials table (ts/tsh = POJ ch/chh) and its 75-final comparison table with the POJ column, encoded verbatim and pinned by a test that counts all 75 and lists every one that differs.
- Tâi-lô tone marks are placed by the manual's rule (a > oo > e, o > i, u; iu → u, ui → i; syllabic m and ng on the first letter; ere on the second e). POJ marks follow the six rules most writers use — one vowel; the other vowel beside i or u; u when i and u meet in a diphthong; the second vowel of a three-letter final; o beside a or e; the nasal when there is no vowel — and the page says the oa/oe cases are debated. Every rule's own published examples are test cases.
- All 75 finals in every tone they can carry survive Tâi-lô → POJ → Tâi-lô unchanged (test-asserted). A token that is not one of the manual's initials plus a final is left as written and listed; the manual's dialect finals with no POJ spelling stay in Tâi-lô and are flagged.
- Corrected 2026-10-14: POJ auh in tone 8 was marked on the u (khau̍h). Rule 4 (the second vowel of a three-letter final) applies "except when rules 2 and 3 apply", and rule 2 marks the vowel that is not i or u, so it is ka̍uh, as Embree writes it in all 47 cases.
- Two POJ orders for a nasal before a final h are read: the ministry's comparison column writes ahⁿ, and Embree's 1973 dictionary writes the ⁿ first (saⁿh) every time the pattern occurs. Neither is treated as wrong; POJ output uses the ministry's table. Until 2026-10-14 saⁿh was refused as "not a Hokkien syllable".
- A syllable with one of the manual's 24 special (dialect) finals stays wholly in Tâi-lô, initial included, and is flagged. Until 2026-10-14 its initial alone was converted, which gave neither system (tsionn → chionn) and, for eng, a real POJ syllable with a different reading (tseng → cheng, POJ for Tâi-lô tsing). The exception is uih, which Embree spells uih in POJ 89 times; it converts both ways.
Sources
- 教育部《臺灣閩南語羅馬字拼音方案使用手冊》, March 2007 (scheme announced 2006-10-14): initials and finals comparison tables with 教會羅馬字 (POJ), tone marks, mark placement and hyphen rules: https://english.moe.gov.tw/public/Attachment/871614393171.pdf
- Pe̍h-ōe-jī — Tone markings (English Wikipedia, tertiary; used only for the six POJ mark-placement rules and their examples, which the MOE manual does not state): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pe%CC%8Dh-%C5%8De-j%C4%AB
- Embree BLM. A Dictionary of Southern Min (Taiwanese-English). 1973; digitised by ChhoeTaigi as ChhoeTaigi_EmbreeTaiengSutian.csv (PojUnicode, PojInput and KipUnicode columns; CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 TW; used to count spellings, nothing redistributed): https://github.com/ChhoeTaigi/ChhoeTaigiDatabase
Abridged — the full review record for this tool runs longer than the list above.
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